To promote Kannada, Centre will send funds directly to State

CIIL, Mysore will not get them anymore

 The Centre has agreed to send funds for promotion of Kannada directly to the State government, according to Umashree, the Minister of State for Kannada and Culture.

Responding to a question raised by Opposition MLCs, Umashree said there were several complaints against the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Mysore, which was receiving grants from the Centre for promoting Kannada.

“We had written to the Centre seeking to adopt the Tamil Nadu model for receiving grants directly for promotion of Kannada which has been recognised as a classical language. The Centre readily accepted the proposal and sought information on projects we are planning to promote Kannada using the grants,” she explained.

In a separate discussion, Council Chairman D H Shankaramurthy pulled up the officials of the department of primary and secondary education for forming rules that discriminate between government and aided and private schoolteachers in sanctioning maternity leaves.

Taking up the matter on behalf of the MLCs, Shankaramurthy got visibly upset when the department replied that maternity leave was available only to government schoolteachers.

“I have noticed many times that the responses from Primary and Secondary Education Minister, Kimmane Rathnakar, appear to show discrimination between government and aided teachers. Perhaps it’s about time the minister took the senior officials to task for forming such discriminatory rules.

Either you do it or I will be forced to shame them in the House,” Shankaramurthy said. He stressed that the department should frame uniform laws for all government, aided and private schoolteachers in respect of such social issues.

On giving promotion to 1,391 “qualified” teachers employed in degree colleges run by the Department of Collegiate Education, Rathnakar said that certain amendments required to bring them under the cover of Cadre and Rules had not been brought in yet. Hence, the teachers had not been granted promotion for almost a decade. Nevertheless, he would discuss the matter with the officials concerned.

Higher Education Minister R V Deshpande said the bigger issue should be considering seniority while promoting the teachers. “It is being studied and we will take a decision soon,” he added. All the 1,391 teachers are said to be MPhil or PhD graduates or have passed the National Eligibility Test (NET) or the State-Level Eligibility Test (SLET).

Deshpande also said the government was taking steps to curb malpractice in universities in the State. In reply to a question, he said the government had already sought suggestions from vice-chancellors of 17 universities in the State on the report of Prof M Chidananda Murthy, which recommended reforms in higher education.